The Matrimonial Domicile and the Property Relations of Married Persons

Abstract

THAT stern and rugged simplicity which Maitland1 found to be the predominant characteristic of English law was well exemplified by the common law doctrine of the unity of husband and wife. In English domestic law before 1883, marriage operated to divest a woman of her capacity to exercise any property rights, which became vested in her husband together with all her personal property.2 Lapped at by the Married Women's Property Act of 1870, eroded by the Act of 1882, and all but submerged by the following flood of remedial legislation, the doctrine of unity survives, inter alia (albeit not unscathed) in three important branches of English law, namely, taxation,3 nationality,4 and the unity of domicile in the conflict of laws, by which a wife automatically acquires a domicile of dependence upon her husband, and follows every subsequent change in his domicile. The doctrine of unity of domicile is not, however, invariably applied in respect of conditions existing at the time of the marriage.